BenFinnigan.com

Monday, March 2, 2015

So you look at the files in your Dropbox account... you look again. Something is missing. You're not sure if a sync went sideways, kids got a hold of one of your connected devices or if maybe this happened during the excitement of that spilled coffee.
Regardless, you need to restore files. As you start to restore some folders your realize there are a lot of files to restore and it will take you hours through the Dropbox web site. Isn't there an easier way? Yes, it's this simple app (currently in review with the Dropbox team) that makes finding and restoring loads of files as easy as possible.
https://googledrive.com/host/0BzalpPp0ImRDUXhqd0pnRVIyd2s/easyundelete.html
Enjoy!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

So, you've been looking at Google Analytics for your personal blog lately and you can't help but wonder "who is from Thailand that keeps looking at my blog?" In the end, you decide it's time to wrap just a little more security around your blog and "go private"

But then, you remember reading an article somewhere that described going private as akin to Blogger Suicide. Apparently without seeing when there are new posts to your blog, your readers eventually get in the habit of just not checking anymore. If only there were a way to make the blog private and still let people know when you publish new posts.

If you're like most people you'll find the email notifications first:

There are a couple of problems with email notifications. First, you are limited to 10 email addresses. Second, did I mention you are limited to 10 email addresses?! Why would anyone write a blog for only 10 people? Needless to say, this isn't a viable option for most people.

This is when geeks get involved and when there's a will, there's a way. Google offers another great service called Feedburner that can help us out. The first thing you'll need to know is where to find the rss feed for private blogs. It's easy, you just need to add /rss.xml to the end of your blog address. So, for example, if your blog is http://myblog.blogspot.com then it's RSS feed URL is http://myblog.blogspot.com/rss.xml

If we go to Feedburner and we put in the now private blog's rss url here's what we see:

Now, there's really nothing stopping you from using your own real personal Gmail credentials in there, but let me just say that I'd rather not have my real credentials sitting in there. Instead, go ahead and create a new Gmail account and send it an invitation to your private blogger blogspot. Be sure not to use special characters in the password because it has to be URL-safe (you get an error "invalid leading or trailing character in the hostname" if you have things besides letters and numbers).

Continuing the example from above and assuming you created a new Gmail account named myrssreader@gmail.com with the password mypass1 then the URL would become http://myrssreader:mypass1@myblog.blogspot.com/rss.xml

After successfully entering your feed into Feedburner it let's you pick a name and URL for the feed:

Afterwards it takes you through some options and lets you pick and choose what to turn on for your feed. This is probably a good time to point out that Feedburner also allows you to password-protect your feed under Publicize there is a Password Protector option:

You would have to share that username and password with all of your readers, but it would give you a little more security seeing as the RSS feed is going to contain everything from the blog that you just made private.

Finally, you can go back into Blogger and set the Post Feed Redirect URL Under Settings>Site Feed:

Then, that's it. Tell people they can subscribe to the RSS feed and pass around the Feedburner URL and optionally a username and password for it if you opted into the Password Protector functionality at Feedburner. Now people can see your new posts through your new RSS feed and you (hopefully) won't lose all your readers to going private.

Edit: If you're reading this post and are truly geeky, I went one step further and added the new gmail account to the Email Notification list and pointed Feedburner to the Gmail RSS Feed formatted thusly: https://username:password@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom for a couple reasons. First, it's using https. Second, The feed that Gmail provides only shows the title and a short snippet from the beginning of the post.

Disclaimer: IMPORTANT: The statements, technical information and recommendations contained herein are believed to be accurate as of the date hereof. Since the conditions and methods of use of the products and of the information referred to herein are beyond our control, Ben expressly disclaims any and all liability as to any results obtained or arising from any use of the products or reliance on such information; NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTY,EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IS MADE CONCERNING THE GOODS DESCRIBED OR THE INFORMATION PROVIDED HEREIN.

The consumer of an app is always presented with a list of permissions before the app is downloaded and installed. It is up to the consumer to read that page and decide how much they trust the developer. Anything that requests access to location, contacts, phone state or phone identity should be scrutinized. Here is a tutorial someone wrote up on the subject:

http://www.brighthub.com/mobile/google-android/articles/91280.aspx

As long as a phone user can read and takes care when they get to the permissions portion of installing an app they won't take any risks they're unaware of. The wsj has tried to sensationalize a topic by claiming users don't know.

If you own an android device just remember to read while you shop for apps and enjoy other's work safely.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

So i just received frf91. The very first thing i noticed had to do with the car dock. It seems like new in this version the home screen will rotate when the phone is in the car. This means that the landscape use in a table for the home screen. I'm very excited about this feature. What else is new? I will post pictures as i find out. Post a comment if you make another discovery.

Monday, June 28, 2010

It's funny with all of these system updates I'd like to see a what's new in each one. Or maybe I don't want to know? Anyway, just received FRF85B, seems to be legitimate so I've installed. Noticeably faster in the camera app. Hard to tell, but I think the browser may have eeked out a little faster too (though that may be attributed to the recent restart only). Aside from that I've not noticed anything new, and have not noticed one piece I'd like to see fixed in Froyo... The soft keyboard swipe down to hide the keyboard doesn't work the way it used to. I always have to use the back key to hide the keyboard now. The swipe left-to-right for voice input also seems more touchy... have to get it just right. Anyway, aside from that I didn't notice anything new at all? What about you? Spot something new and different?